A once-great filmmaker framed in the past

But perhaps it was the freak accident on the last day of filming that gave "Summer, 1921" its mysterious aura. It was tempting to regard the loss of one of the cast as a tragic reflection of the film's theme, a reckless hiatus between two conflagrations. But over the years, Dixon has found the accident frustratingly resistant to interpretation or burial.

In the dark Berlin winter, he fades from one memory to the next, struggling to discover some coherence. Just is a master at navigating the crosscurrents of real dialogue, the jagged non sequiturs that mark conversation. The narrative seems to move in place, full of evocative implica- tions that draw us on without our knowing entirely where we're going. The most masterly quality of this plot is its persistent lack of apparent construction, the way it follows the ordinary and the bizarre with equal fidelity: the monotony of a long car ride, a confrontation with a wounded boar, his father graciously interviewing a war criminal.

Toward the end of this disorienting semester abroad, Dixon is asked to direct an episode of Germany's most popular TV drama. "Wannsee 1899" is a weighty historical soap opera, a period drama that encourages viewers to return to an untroubled past. "The turn of the century was not such a bad time in Germany," one of the crew tells him. "The nation was prosperous and stable." Dixon has his own reasons for finding such nostalgia irresistible, but the project unearths old complications that enliven him rather than allowing him to fall into repose.

Unfortunately, the country remains too shadowy in the novel to support its provocative discussion of the "new Germany," with "Berlin as the capital of the 21st century." Just is a master at creating the interior of a clean, well-lighted pub or moving across the river and into the trees of Germany, but he gives almost no impression whatsoever of the dynamic city. That omission renders the novel's political content strangely hollow.

Like Hemingway, Just honed his skill as a war correspondent. You can hear the crisp descriptions in both as an imprint of their first career. And Just relies on the same almost pretentious dialogue, packed with amorphous irony. (Pop quiz: Which one wrote this? "Oh honey," she said, "things have gone to pieces.")

The disaffected American, adrift in a country scarred by war, rendered impotent by circumstance, burdened by the responsibility to live a meaningful life, Dixon makes a curious reincarnation of Jake Barnes.

That genealogy doesn't take anything from "The Weather in Berlin," of course. Just has his own inimitable things to say about reawakening a creative life. And he says them here in an atmospheric novel that's mysteriously alluring.

• Ron Charles is the Monitor's book editor. E-mailcharlesr@csmonitor.com.

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